“Why Young People Join the Military”

In today’s political climate, with two wars being fought with no end in sight, it can be difficult for some people to understand why young folks enlist in our military.

The conservative claim that most youth enlist due to patriotism and the desire to “serve one’s country” is misleading. The Pentagon’s own surveys show that something vague and abstract called “duty to country” motivates only a portion of enlistees.

The vast majority of young people wind up in the military for different reasons, ranging from economic pressure to the desire to escape a dead-end situation at home to the promise of citizenship.

Over all, disenfranchisement may be one of the most accurate words for why some youth enlist.

When mandatory military service ended in 1973, the volunteer military was born. By the early 1980s, the term “poverty draft” had gained currency to connote the belief that the enlisted ranks of the military were made up of young people with limited economic opportunities.

Today, military recruiters react angrily to the term “poverty draft.” They parse terms in order to argue that “the poor” are not good recruiting material because they lack the necessary education. Any inference that those currently serving do so because they have few other options is met with a sharp rebuke, as Sen. John Kerry learned last November when he seemed to tell a group of college students they could either work hard in school or “get stuck in Iraq.”

President Bush led the bipartisan charge against Kerry: “The men and women who serve in our all-volunteer armed forces are plenty smart and are serving because they are patriots — and Sen. Kerry owes them an apology.”

In reality, Kerry’s “botched joke” — Kerry said he was talking about President Bush and not the troops — contained a kernel of truth. It is not so much that one either studies hard or winds up in Iraq but rather that many U.S. troops enlist because access to higher education is closed off to them. Although they may be “plenty smart,” financial hardship drives many to view the military’s promise of money for college as their only hope to study beyond high school.

Recruiters may not explicitly target “the poor,” but there is mounting evidence that they target those whose career options are severely limited. According to a 2007 Associated Press analysis, “nearly three-fourths of [U.S. troops] killed in Iraq came from towns where the per capita income was below the national average. More than half came from towns where the percentage of people living in poverty topped the national average.”

It perhaps should come as no surprise that the Army GED Plus Enlistment Program, in which applicants without high school diplomas are allowed to enlist while they complete a high school equivalency certificate, is focused on inner-city areas.

When working-class youth make it to their local community college, they often encounter military recruiters working hard to discourage them. “You’re not going anywhere here,” recruiters say. “This place is a dead end. I can offer you more.” Pentagon-sponsored studies — such as the RAND Corporation’s “Recruiting Youth in the College Market: Current Practices and Future Policy Options” — speak openly about college as the recruiter’s number one competitor for the youth market.

Add in race as a supplemental factor for how class determines the propensity to enlist and you begin to understand why communities of color believe military recruiters disproportionately target their children. Recruiters swear they don’t target by race. But the millions of Pentagon dollars spent on special recruiting campaigns for Latino and African-American youth contradicts their claim.

According to an Army Web site, the goal of the “Hispanic H2 Tour” was to “Build confidence, trust, and preference of the Army within the Hispanic community.” The “Takin’ it to the Streets Tour” was designed to accelerate recruitment in the African-American community where recruiters are particularly hard-pressed and faced with declining interest in the military as a career. In short, the nexus between class, race, and the “volunteer armed forces” is an unavoidable fact.

***

Not all recruits, of course, are driven by financial need. In working-class communities of every color, there are often long-standing traditions of military service and links between service and privileged forms of masculinity. For communities often marked as “foreign,” such as Latinos and Asians, there is pressure to serve in order to prove that one is “American.” For recent immigrants, there is the lure of gaining legal resident status or citizenship.

Economic pressure, however, is an undeniable motivation — yet to assert that fact in public often leads to confrontations with conservatives who ask, “How dare you question our troops’ patriotism?”

But any simplistic understanding of “patriotism” does not begin to capture the myriad of subjective motivations that often coexist alongside economic motives. Altruism — or as youth often put it, “I want to make a difference” — is also a major reason a significant number of people enlist.

It is a terrible irony that contemporary American society provides working-class youth with few other outlets besides the military for their desire for agency, personal empowerment, and social commitment. It is especially tragic whenever U.S. foreign policy turns away from national defense and back toward the imperial tradition of military adventurism, as it did in Vietnam and Iraq.

Within a worldview of pre-emptive war and wars of choice, the altruism and good intentions of young people become one more sentiment to be manipulated and exploited in order to further the aims of a small group of policymakers.

In this scenario, the desire to “make a difference,” once inserted into the military apparatus, means young Americans may have to kill innocent people or become brutalized by the realities of combat.

Take the tragic example of Sgt. Paul Cortez, who graduated in 2000 from Central High School in the working-class town of Barstow, Calif., joined the Army, and was sent to Iraq. On March 12, 2006, he participated in the gang rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her and her entire family.

When asked about Cortez, a classmate said: “He would never do something like that. He would never hurt a female. He would never hit one or even raise his hand to one. Fighting for his country is one thing, but not when it comes to raping and murdering. That’s not him.”

Let us accept the claim that “that’s not him.” Nevertheless, because of a series of unspeakable and unpardonable events within the context of an illegal and immoral war, “that” is what he became. On February 21, 2007, Cortez pled guilty to the rape and four counts of felony murder. He was convicted a few days later, sentenced to life in prison and a lifetime in his own personal hell.

As ex-Marine Martin Smith wrote recently in Counterpunch: “It speaks volumes that in order for young working-class men and women to gain self-confidence or self-worth, they seek to join an institution that trains them how to destroy, maim, and kill. The desire to become a Marine — as a journey to one’s manhood or as a path to self-improvement — is a stinging indictment of the pathology of our class-ridden world.”

Like a large mammal insensitive to its offspring’s needs and whereabouts, America is rolling over on the aspirations of its children and crushing them in the process.

Many U.S. troops crack under the pressure of combat and its aftershocks. At least one in eight of all Iraq veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress, according to a 2004 Pentagon study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, executive director of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, stated that the study’s results were far too conservative. As the war in Iraq drags on, many more young veterans will experience some debilitating form of PTSD.

Others are opting for conscientious objector (CO) status. Hundreds of troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have either begun or completed the CO process. According to Bill Galvin of the Center on Conscience and War: “For some people, the training gets to them. From stabbing dummies, to shouting ‘Kill!’ or ‘Blood makes the grass grow!’ But in the last year or two, we’ve been hearing people talking about their experiences in the war, or talking about the children they’ve witnessed being killed, or the civilians that were murdered. Some of them are wrestling with the guilt about people they may have killed or families they may have ruined.”

Most people are not predisposed to kill, and so it should concern us that our children are being increasingly militarized in their schools and the culture as a whole. To take only one example: What does it mean for a society to put young people from ages 8 to 18 in military uniforms and call it “leadership training”? This is precisely what each of the more than 300 units of the Young Marines program is doing at a neighborhood school near you.

From rural America to the urban cores of deindustrialized cities, a military caste system is slowly taking shape. If recent history is any indication, our politicians will use our military less for national defense than for adventures premised on control of resources, strategic advantage, and ideological fantasies. As in the final decades of every declining empire, it’s likely that many wars loom in our future.

Exactly who will have to fight and die in those wars will be determined by economic class. In order to accomplish their goals, the recruiters and politicians will exploit the hopes and dreams of mostly well-intentioned youth from humble origins who are looking for a way to contribute to a society that has lost its moral compass. As they did in Vietnam and again in Iraq, young women and men will serve their country. But how well will their country have served them?

Jorge Mariscal is the grandson of Mexican immigrants and the son of a U.S. Marine who fought in World War II. He served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam and currently teaches at the University of California, San Diego.

42 Responses to ““Why Young People Join the Military””

I am an eight grader and am working on science project to answer the question. Do more poor people join the military versus richer people?
I already like this article but need more data for example, percentages.
Can you help?

[…] And now, as of a couple of weeks ago, I can say that two young people who are dear to me have informed me that they have chosen to join the Armed Forces and submit themselves to a process where they will be forced to surrender their ability to think independently, silence their conscience, and dehumanize other human beings so that pulling the trigger will be easier. They’ve agreed to become a part of the world’s war machine – a highly profitable system utilized by the principalities of this world to control the general population of the global community. They’re not the only young people in my circle who have made this decision. I know many young people who have opted to take this path…despite the scriptures, despite Dr. King, despite their religious beliefs, despite Jesus. It baffles me why young people join the military. […]

I think that most of this article is true many of the youth join the armed forces to obtain money support in college. In my case I really feel like I want to joined the armed forces due to personal problems and I feel I can forget certain events of my life and help our people. Since I am a female lot of people have told me is that military life is not for me but I have this hunger and I feel that maybe I can fulfill it by serving our country.

YOU POEPLE DONT DESERVE TO LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY. YOU DONT KNOW JACK SHIT. JUST BECAUSE YOU POEPLE WILL NEVER GROW THE BALLS TO WEAR THIS UNIFORM DONT TALK BAD ABOUT SOMETHING THAT YOU COLD NEVER BE. EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN RIGHT TO SERVE IN ANY BRANCH THEY CHOOSE, JUST LIKE HOW YOU POEPLE CHOOSE TO BE SCARED LITTLE BITCHES THAT TAKE THIS COUNTRY FOR GRANTED, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY COUNTRY!!!!

When was the last time we actually defended our country, WWII. All the wars since were preemptive. Yes the soldiers served their country. They served the politicians though, not the people. Good people will never stop carrying about the troops, the politicians on the other hand will. The politicians use the military as a tool for their own gain and their decisions without much regard for the soldier.

The people care about you, and many as do I, respect the uniform, but refuse to take part in the politicians personal wars.

I’d suggest you take a second look at this country, and think about what this country stands for. This country stands for freedom, freedom of speech, and in the beggining this freedom was about VERY MUCH about second guessing the goverment, as goverment is power, and people in nature want to hold on to this power. If you read your history, you would know this but, we our doing our American duty in second guessing the nature of the government and their intentions.

Their are more ways then one to serve your country, I vote, I take part in fundraisings, I am on the student senate at my university. I may not enforce goverment policy in some foriegn nation by fighting the natives, but somones got to do it, OR think of this, if others such as my self were able to put a stop to these wars, you wouldn’t be needed to be their. The killing. It doesn’t need to be happening. WE ARE NOT DEFENDING THE HOME FRONT by being in Iraq. If it was in my front lawn or any state that was being attack I would not hesitate to defend my country, in which gives me these freedoms.

please consider. There is more then one way to do things. Please don’t hate those that disagree with the government, it is our duty as a citizen of America, to be informed on policy, and cast our ballet accordingly, and/or rally up the forces on the home front to try and change the goverment for the better of all. Their are peaceful ways to serve ones country.

I can tell you this, I do not take my country for granted, just because I don’t enlist to go and kill people OVER SEAS, that does not make me a scared little bitch or a coward, or have the lack of balls. I would more say that that makes me a very intelligent skeptic of American policy. And I can also tell you this “DONT KNOW JACK SHIT” in reference to that, I do know what I am talking about, thank you very much. I can’t say I “deserve” to be in this country, who deserves what? I will not judge, possibly you don’t deserve in this country. Men should not judge who is deserving, let us not judge else we shall be judged ect ect, not that I’m a religious man or anything. I am a learned man, that is all.

And you are completely correct, everyone does have the right to serve in any branch they desire, and this is why I choose to serve on this branch, the political front, in which I shall make more progress in changing the world then mowing down a bunch of children in iraq.

and lastly, No, I am not getting the fuck out of YOUR country. I like it here :)

“YOU POEPLE DONT DESERVE TO LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY. YOU DONT KNOW JACK SHIT. JUST BECAUSE YOU POEPLE WILL NEVER GROW THE BALLS TO WEAR THIS UNIFORM DONT TALK BAD ABOUT SOMETHING THAT YOU COLD NEVER BE. EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN RIGHT TO SERVE IN ANY BRANCH THEY CHOOSE, JUST LIKE HOW YOU POEPLE CHOOSE TO BE SCARED LITTLE BITCHES THAT TAKE THIS COUNTRY FOR GRANTED, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY COUNTRY!!!!”

This is a really sad website. There is nothing greater than the honor of serving one’s country. I feel sorry for people who feel that this country is not worth the sacrifice that so many people are willing to risk their lives or die for on a daily basis. Your peers are willing to stand for the greatest country in the world while the administrators and supporters of this site are comfortably sitting in their homes too scared to defend their loved ones and families. I really hope that you are okay with people like myself defending you cowards. I did not come from a poor family, and I did attend college. I enjoy providing a FREE country for my family and friends. So live your life, knowing that I will gladly risk my life for you, sleep well knowing that brave people are there to defend you cowards. DUTY HONOR COUNTRY. HOOAH!

My question to all of you is what exactly are we going to do if foreign soldiery steps foot on our homeland? How are we going to defend her? Who will defend our citizens in case of an enemy attack? Are you idiots going to free-think them out of existence? You make me laugh but at the same time give me much cause to worry about the future of our nation. War is as old as time itself and a strong military is very sorely needed in this increasingly unstable and violent world we live in. Anyway, if it weren’t for men willing to fight in the continental ARMY, you morons wouldn’t have all of your rights which you claim the military takes away.

“It is the soldier, not the journalist who has given us freedom of the press….” and so on…

The whole point of the this is that this, IS NOT home land soil. and foreign soldiers haven’t set foot in this country in a long time. the point is that exactly, and yes, it would completely differ. Now, the military is off fighting on foreign soil. If it was actually fighting for my country, yes I would, but going to go mow down children in iraq for oil, nahah I think I’d rather get my BA.

I strongly believe that when you hijack American planes and ram them into buildings, and take the lives of innocent people, there is a reason why you respond and set foot in foreign soil, as in Afghanistan. How about to prevent it from happening again? How about to prevent further acts such as the attempted bombing in times square in 2010 or the “underwear bomber.” They may not have been uniformed soldiers, but they definitely were terrorist setting foot on our HOME soil.

If the Iraq war was really about oil, can you tell me why we haven’t taken a single drop of Iraq’s oil? That’s because it’s not about oil, its about Iraq having terrorist training camps, funding for terrorism around the world, and major violations against the Geneva Conventions of 1954. Mowing down children, according to the Law of Armed Conflict, that would be illegal. Some of your reasoning seems naive and its not hard to believe when you obtain all your facts from the media and what they want to see. I know for damn sure you have not seen or witnessed this personally.

Also, the last time I checked the military last defended our country was everyday. It may not be obvious because the media doesn’t portray it on TV, but the military does its part in defending our nation everyday. That is why so often we are not attacked because the armed forces are up and watching over us. Satellites, RADAR, Air defense, Ground defense, Naval vessels, Intelligence, manning, engineering, medical, etc. Take all that away and see how fast the the death toll starts piling up. It is negligent of you to say that “If it was actually fighting for my country,” they do it everyday.

By the way, what are you obtaining your BA in, and if you had a solution to put a stop to these wars, what would your solution be?

You people need to keep in mind that ther would be no America with no military. You all bite the hand that keeps you safe. You all have expressed your opinoins with no facts. I would bet money that half of you would not meet todays military standards. You all are to fat, to criminal or to stupid!!

well, I guess I’m not the half that you’re thinking of, a fit college student that doesn’t want to go to foreign countries and kill ppl for no particular reason. We are not being kept safe by killing people over seas… ww2 was the last war we actually fought to keep us safe, so don’t give that “you bite the hand that feeds you” bull crap.

I personally don’t diss the military, just the cause, and then again maybe any soldier that can’t open his mind wider then the scopes of his rifle.

First of all “God Bless the Warriors” who’ve had the courage to serve the
Red,White,& Blue with Honor.
Second of all the “IDIOTS” that started this site and anyone who supports it don’t deserve to live here so crawl back under the rock you came from.

Very nice post. But I must encourage anyone who is interested in this software to further your education and get books & tutorials. Barns n Noble has good tutorials. No money? You can order free video tutorials online by clicking: http://bit.ly/learning-software Youtube is also a great source of finding tutorials just make sure to quote your searches for an exact match.

I was just discharged from the USN last year, I proudly served this great country for 3 and a half years and regret having to leave. I would not have left if my situation were different. After reading all of this banter here, I just wanna say to the military personnel who post here, that you need not reply to ignorance but if you do, use intelligent words rather than bashing because we soldiers are better than that. I also want to say that I am very concerned for the future of America because too many young kids are joining the military of late just for money and all the wrong reasons. If you want to serve your country then do it but don’t use the military as your escape or as an easy way to get college money because people like that are bringing our military down. Also, after seeing what the US military is like, I feel that major reform is needed to ensure that our military will be able to stave off future foreign threats because right now our military is becoming far too soft.

Over the course of my life i’ve thought about the military. The conclusion I always come to in regards to my opinion about it is that I don’t trust it. It’s too cold. Too masculine. Too brutal. I think going into the peacecorpse or helping the red cross or working with a local shelter is a far better way to help your country and it won’t scar you psychologically.

For all of the things we’ve done wrong with our guns and soldiers I don’t blame hte soldiers specifically. They serve their country by becoming tools and our government uses these tools to achieve aims. Serving your country by going into the military is the ultimate self-sacrifice because the moment you join you discard your choice/opinion on the matter. The moment you join you can’t argue with the drill sergeant or your commander. Your job at that point is to follow orders and do that well enough that your unit can accomplish its goals. Getting thrown out of the military because you refused to comply will significantly hamper any future efforts on the domestic side of things to live successfully. So the moment to protest or to disagree is not after joining or during. This is why I do not blame soldiers for a failed campaign. I blame leadership.

As some have said here, there’re instances where arming ourselves and fighting are crucial to our survival. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, we only had one choice: fight. We were up against another country that could severely harm us and it couldn’t have been more obvious. During the civil war something similar happened. When war like that happens, there’s little question whether fighting is helpful because it’s a question of survival. When Hitler launched his blood craze on the world everyone joined forces to prevent him from dictating his terms on the world.

But Iraq and Afghanistan and many other wars are not on the same scale. Both of them were pre-emptive. Iraq did not pose an existential threat to us. It only posed that kind of threat in the minds of those who nurture prediction and pre-emptive theory. How many other example are there? Many. The military is becoming our all-purpose tool. Every problem looks like a problem that can be fixed with a gun or a bomb.

Look at how much we spend for the military. America spends almost 50% on global military assets. China is close to 7%. No nation on earht even comes close to the amount of finances we pump into the miltary industrial complex. This can and will lead to a situation where we’re inflexible and the military becomes our response to most problems. We may enter into a world where american has fallen behind other modern countries and yet has continued to fuel its military to absurd levels. It seems most failed nations put their money into the military because they mistake military power for power. We appear to be doing something similar. The only question is how long will it continue. How long until we realize that being a successful nation does not mean putting most of our money into guns and bombs?

Everytime I find myself forgetting the basic premise for having a miltary, I always think back to world war II when we were attacked by japan and I imagine a bunch of soldiers on a ship and a commander says “9/10 of you standing here aren’t going to live past the next few days. You’re on the front line and on entering the shore you’re in a barrage of enemy bullets. You can die proud and your sacrifice here will preserve your name in history.”

We have to remember the sacrifice and the fear and the pride. We have to remember that we always need a military just in case. But before we get too jumpy and prone to always using a gun to solve a problem, Marcus Tullius Cicero is quoted as saying, “An unjust peace is better than a just war.” The cost of high is extraordinary high and that’s why we should only resort to it in the most extreme of circumstances.

The US does have it’s problems along with the rest of the world… We try to take on to much at once because people think that we can not be beaten. Well maybe we can’t be beaten by other countries but why would anyone looking to gain from seeing America crumble interfere with it when its destroying itself. We are our greatest enemy…

I often wonder what it was like back in those days where when you joined the military either by volunteering or by draft it was to protect this country( I am not including the terrorists which is a big deal i mean uniformed soldiers). I don’t know many the many different reasons why people join the military but when i was talking to a marine recruiter he asked me what was wrong after he found out that i have already had one semester of college. I asked him why did anything have to be wrong for me to be interested in the military… He told me that there doesn’t it is just that most people who join from college tells him that college isn’t what they thought it would be or they can’t afford it…
Me, I plan on joining the air force para-rescue after this December and it’s not because college is going bad or i can’t afford it. I love college. It’s just that i feel like this is something i should do for my family that way when there is a day when the America needs protection from something i will be ready( these are not the only reasons i wish to join just the ones i wish to say)

There are people who serve the country without joining the military and i am thankful to both. The people who take an active roll in their governments decisions are few ,and It is saddening every time i see some soldier who doesn’t know the difference between a friend and enemy other than their fellow soldiers. You should trust and appreciate these people who have good hearts and try to keep the government in check with their knowledge and sense of righteousness (with their faults). FOR THIS IS YOUR BURDEN

And to the soldiers whom give everything fighting for what they believe in should not be judged. It takes a true person to give up everything to fight for their beliefs and although your reasons may not be good enough to most It doesn’t give them the right to criticize for if you are a true soldier then you know why you are there and what you are doing. FOR THIS IS YOUR BURDEN

I would also like to apologize to both groups because i am neither an active soldier and do not know what it is like and i do not take active roll and follow our governments decisions. Therefore i really have no place here.

This is the beginning of my Internet Life. I have reitred from the grind. I can see that there is a rich diversity in the blogs I am reading and I am trying to leave some comment whereever I visit. I think I really appreciate the basics of what you h…

I am currently enlisted Air force and feel played for sure. Its not all my country’s fault though, they did not force me to do this. I agreed to this and did not think about the global impact that would come of this. I was not thinking of any of that, as was stated in the article i was in a dead end position at home. at 17 i enlisted and could not wait to be in San Antonio because of pressure at home. I wish i would have thought about it first and not gone into it with with only that in mind. I am not saying that no one should join the military and i hold my brothers and sisters in arms in very high regards and admire them for their bravery to pick up a gun and give up a huge part of them for a chance at becoming something better or leaving a situation that drove them to this like my self. I just wish i had slowed down and thought about what we are doing and who we are defending ourselves from. I took an oath to defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic, however i don’t believe that is what we are doing right now and i believe that we as a whole are being abused and are thought of as no more that hired thugs to those that point the fingers that we follow. I love my country, even though it is abusing me and my brothers and sisters, i love my country even though we are doing the opposite of what the people who came here and established fought so hard to create. I don’t want this to be America’s undoing. Be proud to be an American, but don’t let that pride blind you into doing something that is un-American or just plain wrong.

Excellent post. I was checking constantly this blog and I am impressed! Very helpful info specially the last section :) I take care of such info a lot. I was seeking this certain info for a long time. Thanks and best of luck.

Thank you, Trevor, for your honesty and for taking personal responsibility instead of blaming. If this were the only thing you learned through your service, it would have been worth it. It is masculine, it is mature. Your words convey a lot of goodness and courage.
My daughter is thinking about signing up for the navy for noble reasons. How does a parent discourage that without seeming selfish? Selfishness, complacency,lack of appreciation for sacrifice, or cowardlyness does not motivate me. Lack of her being truly informed, losing her freedom to turn back, being enticed and coerced, these things concern me greatly.
Lord grant us all to serve others without losing our personal dignity. For those of us who are “stuck” may He show us true internal freedom despite our circumstances. A woman suffering with end stage MS spoke well when she said,”You can always do something.”

I have seen a robust sober man driven perfectly mad for the moment by two portions of so-called rum, supplied to him at one of these simple shanties.
Nash, who had received a gigantic claim in reward for his discovery, could possibly be seen
nearly every day busily at work. Neighbours were quite
few, and there were only three other women living inside neighbourhood – all
lived in a choice of bark huts or tents using young children.

So what is your solution? Shall we disable our military or persecute its members.

By the way I am am one semester away from completing my bachelors degree in Pre-Med and currently in the process of ENLISTING(not commissioning) into the Army.

Rather then downplaying the military you should consider finding a viable solution to one of the many problems in this country. Or maybe you should enlist and learn to APPRECIATE all we have in this great country by seeing the poverty in most foreign lands,